When racism is no longer funny

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post Writers Group

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, May 22, 2005

2005-05-22 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- WHY WOULD black comedian Dave Chappelle run away from megafame and megafortune to seek anonymity on an Indian Ocean beach, about as far from Hollywood as he could get? It's really not so hard to imagine. The genius that makes Chappelle the nation's hottest comic is being able to grab the electric third rail of American life and transmit its energy in a way that makes people laugh. Do that long enough and one of two things happens: You let go, or you get burned.

The third rail, of course, is race. We laugh so hard at racial humor because it's dangerous, naked and forbidden, almost like pornography. But the thin line between hilarious and offensive can shift without warning. A joke that kills today might get you punched tomorrow.

Great glory comes to the comic who's able to dance closest to the line. Richard Pryor worked that neighborhood once, as did Eddie Murphy, as did Chris Rock. Those funny men never stopped being funny but did become less dangerous over time; their own daring moved the line, and their jokes began to fall too comfortably within the newly enlarged safety zone. Rule of thumb: If they let you host the Oscars, you're no longer on the edge.

"Chappelle's Show" is one of Comedy Central's top-rated shows; a compilation of the first season's episodes is the best-selling TV-series DVD in history; the second-season DVD could be even bigger. To keep him for a third season and beyond, Comedy Central signed Chappelle to a contract that would pay him up to $50 million -- not bad for acting a fool.

But just as he was finishing the next batch of shows, Chappelle vanished. There were rumors of drugs or a breakdown, but a Time magazine writer tracked him down in remote Durban, South Africa, of all places, where he was clearing his head with a friend and sometime spiritual adviser.

Chappelle manages to say things about race that the rest of us wouldn't dare think, much less let pass our lips. Take his use of the word considered the ultimate racial slur, the word beginning with "n." It's hard to find a black comic younger than Bill Cosby who doesn't season his monologues liberally with that word, but Chappelle doesn't sprinkle, he pours. One of his sketches, for example, was about a white family whose surname was That Word. Mom, Dad and the kids spoke to and about one another in phrases -- "He's a little (That Word), all right!" -- that otherwise would prompt a lawsuit or a beat-down.

It was fall-off-the-chair funny, but afterward you didn't want to think too much about why you had laughed so hard. Same with a sketch that imagined blacks getting reparation checks for slavery, then running out to splurge in liquor stores and Cadillac dealerships. A lot of Chappelle's humor is like that, confronting racial stereotypes so literally that the effect is startling, outrageous and more than a little unsettling.

According to Time, Chappelle became unsure about his material for the new season when a white visitor at a taping laughed especially hard and long over a sketch Chappelle performed in blackface. "When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable," Time quotes Chappelle as saying. His longtime writing partner is quoted as confirming that Chappelle had decided some of his material was not funny but "racist."

For me, this context makes Chappelle's flight from a $50 million payday so much more understandable.

It's one thing for a black comic to perform racially charged material that delights black audiences. A black audience takes it as pure satire or a kind of inside-the-family ribbing; slurs and stereotypes have no power as weapons of mass distortion. But how can you be sure that a white audience doesn't take the jokes as "proof" of ugly, buried, unacknowledged assumptions?

Maybe you shouldn't care. Maybe you just decide that intent is the important thing. You know what you meant by the joke, and people are rolling in the aisles. Who cares why they're laughing?

But if you're as thoughtful as Dave Chappelle, and you're serious about your conversion to Islam, and you stop to ask the question, then maybe you have no choice. If you doubt the impact of your humor -- or worse, your own intent -- then maybe it's not a bad idea to take a break.

I'll be happy if Chappelle comes back soon to resume making me laugh 'til I cry. But I understand if he feels burned; I understand if, for a while, he needs to let go.

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